The earliest bubble making device has been known for centuries, and simply consists of a surface containing an opening, most frequently a hoop or ring, that can be dipped into an appropriate bubble forming solution (liquid soap, for example). Surface tension causes the bubble solution to form a film that stretches across the opening, and a bubble is readily formed and expelled from the opening in response to the user blowing gently on the film in a direction perpendicular to the plane of the opening.
Of course, this bubble blowing device most often serves as a toy for small children, and like many other toys, has been updated over the years in the wake of progressing technology. There is hardly a toy available that has not been improved through electronic or other means to produce the same results as manually operated toys of days gone by, and these technologically improved toys enjoy widespread popularity. Children of today demand toys that are active rather than passive in nature, and the market has responded with a wide variety of electronic and electromechanical toy products.
There are many examples of mechanized bubble blowing devices, some operated by battery power, that can produce many more bubbles than a simple manual bubble blowing device of the type just described. The deft user of the simple bubble blowing toy can produce many special effects with bubbles, and among the favorites is the construction of a chain of bubbles, sometimes involving competitions centering around the production of the longest chains.
There are mechanized devices available that can produce limited chains or garlands of bubbles, but these have the disadvantage of producing their garlands from a massive volume of very small bubbles, or requiring manual intervention by the operator to produce viable chains of simply connected large bubbles.
Accordingly, a need arises for an electrically operated bubble making toy that will produce lengthy chains of relatively large, simply connected bubbles without requiring the manual intervention of the user.